The Diamond Lane Read Online Free PDF

on foot through the forest to the Catholic mission near Nia Nia, then three days from the mission by Land Rover down the rutted road to Kisangani, where they had just checked into the Hotel Superbe, a five-star hotel featuring greasy sheets, a sagging, infested mattress, and one bare bulb. Luxurious, compared to the stinky plastic tent they were used to.
    They shared a shower of cold brown water, their first in nearly a month, went to American Express to pick up mail and messages, then went to the post office. It was the only place in town to make a long-distance call, requiring a written request to the operator, the necessary matabeesh , the bribe money, and a Jobian amount of patience. Sometimes it took forty-five minutes, sometimes four hours.
    They sat on a long wooden bench and waited. They sat, sweated, and slapped flies. Despite the shower, a thin sheen of mud coated their skin. Breathing was like sucking air through a washcloth. But Mouse was grateful for the discomfort, her exhaustion. It prevented her worrying too deeply about the phone call from home. It could not have been easy to find her. Surely the news was not good.
    â€œPerhaps they’re just coming for a visit. Popping over from Egypt or something,” Tony tried to reassure her.
    â€œMy mother refuses to drive on the freeway. I kind of doubt she’s in Egypt.”
    â€œOne never knows.” Tony sat scribbling in a notebook bowed from traveling in his back pocket, making notes on a screenplay he was writing in his spare time. He pinched the end of his sunburnt nose, glanced over at Mouse. She had a mop of thick dark hair, small regular features, glass-green eyes, an unexpectedly dimpled chin . No, too specific. Vince Parchman, the Peace Corps volunteer from whom he had taken a filmic writing seminar in Nairobi the year before, had said description should be written so any actor could play the role. Height, hair color, and the like were too limiting. A hundred pounds of trouble . Better. She was an iron fist in a velvet glove . An iron fist in an iron glove was actually the case, he thought. A cute iron glove. An iron fist in an extremely appealing iron glove . Yeccch. He flipped the notebook closed and slid it back in his pocket.
    Vince had inoculated Maasai babies in Ngong during the week, and taught filmic writing on Tuesday nights in a quiet corner of a local bar, You’ll Regret It. In addition to the usual restless expatriates, he had had a few Maasai and Kikuyu. The best script in the class had been a corning-of-age piece written by a Maasai teenager.
    â€œWhere do you think Gideon is these days? You know, the kid with that terrific circumcision script. From filmic writing.”
    â€œYou didn’t hear? He’s president of Warner Brothers.”
    â€œHar, har, har.”
    A gang of children with big bellies and the cottony yellow-tipped hair of the malnourished stood in a half circle around Mouse and Tony, watching. Flies buzzed in the corners of their eyes, clustered around their nostrils. A man in a limp skullcap napped against the wall by the front door. His job was to whip the children with a bamboo switch if they so much as extended one thin grubby palm.
    Mouse fumbled around in her bag, extracting a bottle of pearly pink nail polish. The tiny silver ball inside clicked as she shook it. She spread her brown hand on her knee, slapped a coat of polish on her nails. Somewhere she’d picked up a fungus that had turned them greenish black. To her lasting irritation there was no cure, only cover-up.
    The boldest child spread his hand next to hers. She painted his nails, as well as the nails of anyone else brave enough to approach. The children solemnly spread their hands, one by one, as though the spreading of their fingers, the resting of their hands on her kneecap was part of the ritual. She felt Tony’s eyes on her.
    â€œNow don’t go putting this in your bloody screenplay,” she said, smiling,